NSA surveillance used in Somali terrorism case

San Diego  The National Security Agency surveillance programs that swept up information on domestic phone calls and Internet traffic from abroad played a key role in the prosecution of four Somali immigrants in San Diego for funding the terrorist group al-Shabaab.

Testifying on Capitol Hill on Tuesday in front of the House Intelligence Committee, the head of the NSA and the deputy director of the FBI said the San Diego case was one of dozens of plots uncovered as a result of the controversial spying programs.

FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce said that the NSA gave the agency a phone number from San Diego that had been in contact with an “extremist” outside the U.S. That apparently was the start of the case that led to the indictment in 2010 of the Somalis for providing material support to a terrorism organization.

The four men — Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud, the imam at a local mosque, cabdrivers Basaaly Sayeed Moalin and Ahmed Nasiri Taalil Mohamud, and Issa Doreh, who worked at a money remittance business in City Heights — were convicted in February following a jury trial in federal court.

They were charged with funneling about $8,500 to al-Shabaab in 2007 and 2008. The Somali-based group has been accused of suicide bombings, beheadings, kidnappings, and attacks on U.N. peacekeeping and government forces in Somalia. It espouses a radical Islamist view and is aligned with al-Qaeda.

During the trial of the Somali men in San Diego, dozens of recorded phone calls among the men and people in Somalia were played for the jury.

Moalin’s lawyer, Joshua Dratel, said in court filings in December 2011 that the government intercepted a year’s worth of Moalin’s calls, eventually turning over 1,800 to the defense for trial preparation. In addition, he said investigators intercepted 680 pages of Moalin’s email traffic.

Court records show prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office filed three notices informing defense lawyers they planned to use information obtained through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA.

The notices were filed in November 2010 and again in January 2011 and January 2012, and said the government planned to use “information obtained or derived from electronic surveillance and physical search” conducted under the act.

Assistant U.S. Attorney William Cole, the lead prosecutor on the case, confirmed Tuesday that Joyce was referring to the Moalin case. He declined to comment more extensively on how the information was used.

He said the FISA notices are required under the law to allow defense lawyers to know the source of evidence against their clients. The notice is distinguished from more common notices of wiretaps approved by federal judges in non-terrorism cases, Cole said.

None of those types of wiretaps were used in the Somali case, he said.

Before the trial started, the defense lawyers tried to get the phone calls disallowed as evidence, arguing they violated the constitutional rights of the defendants and FISA. The defense lawyers were not allowed to see the FISA warrants because they are secret. Those motions were denied, and the calls were used at the trial.

All four men were convicted of terrorism support charges and money laundering, and they each face at least 15 years in prison. The men are set to be sentenced in September.